Contenu du sommaire : Émotions politiques

Emotional registers
The object of this article is to show to what degree the theoretical approach to emotions is sometimes embedded in the very heart of the processes that drive individuals to coordinate their action with the aim of supporting a collective cause. In this vein, the analysis seeks first to highlight what distinguishes the different emotional registers through which entrepreneurs of causes can express outrage against a moral disorder. The most decisive criterion results from the distinction between immediate, affective reactions and intellectual evaluations. In effect, by using intellectual evaluations, specialists of philosophy can work toward a moralization of emotions as a specific form of engagement necessitating not only cognitive competencies but also appropriate affective dispositions, particularly with regard to argumentative disputes. In this way, philosophic activity can be envisaged as one form, among others, of the formalization of emotions, which can be very useful in the development of collective claims that are most likely to be heard by political institutions. The analysis provided rests on empirical observations made during a study of animal protection activists who, considering the dimensions that distinguish different activists of this cause, offer an ideal vantage point.

Knowledge and passion: thinking about causality and the “good cause” from the Enlightenment to today. In the Enlightenment period, authors like Leibniz, Voltaire, Hume and Rousseau engaged in a reflection about the nature of knowledge. In this contribution, the foundations and limits of knowledge will be explored from the point of view of the question of causality. To understand the causal relationship between two events is, following Hume, to establish associations of ideas. However, it is necessary to submit those different associations to refutation. Thus it appears necessary to distinguish cause and effect, on one hand, and series of occurrences, on the other hand. Similarly, a scientifically refutable explanation is to be distinguished from an explanation that can neither be proved nor disproved. The analysis shows that the confusion between different types of explanation obscures the role of moralizing passions in causal explanations that claim to be scientific. At the same time, the author argues that scientific inquiry, in particular in the social sciences, cannot emancipate itself from a type of engagement with its objects that is at once moral and emotive.

The publicity of parliamentary debates: a triumph for argumentation?
The distinction between persuasion and conviction has often been used to disqualify the passions stirred up by ancient eloquence, which would have led popular assemblies to fall upon the spell of demagogues. On the contrary, according to Condorcet and Perelman, the publicity of parliamentary debates among elected representatives would guarantee the triumph of arguments weighted in fine by the “cold and severe” judgement of citizens elevated to the rank of “universal audience”. Between the public space of Enlightenment and the propaganda of mass democracies, as described by Habermas, the French Revolution gave voice to mixed forms of rhetoric that challenged the traditional categories of persuasion and conviction, deliberative and epideictic, giving room to strategic uses of publicity, with which Condorcet and Barère won the assent of the Legislative and of the Convention.

Indignation between pity and disgust: the ambiguities of a moral emotion
Indignation is often understood to be the translation of an essentially just moral evaluation. However, it is necessary to investigate the ambiguities of this moral emotion. In the first part, an examination of the genealogy of indignation sheds light on the differences and similarities between ancient and modern conceptions of indignation. Modern indignation presupposes a universalist notion of dignity and thus sets itself not only against injustice, as is the case of ancient nemesis, but also indignity. The paper then discusses the sources of modern indignation, in particular pity and disgust. It appears that compassionate indignation operates a distancing between the “spectator” and the victim, while disgusted indignation involves a more reflexive process by which the distinction between in-groups and out-groups is reinforced. The findings of cognitive neurology and social psychology are then analyzed in order to show to what extent moral indignation and primary disgust are in fact homologous. Finally, the political effects, both positive and negative, of indignation are studied.

The tension between authoritarianism and compassion. The case of Franklin Brito in Venezuela
This work describes the conditions and circumstances of the protest of a hunger striker in Venezuela. The paper offers an anthropological reading of politics, with the aim of showing the tension between authoritarianism and compassion. The work is divided into three parts. First, the sequences of the conflict and the trajectory of this striker will be presented. Then, the different political readings of the case will be analyzed, to show the importance of the political relationship inherent in the social and political emotions that this case involves. Finally, I will show the paradox underlying the mobilization of compassion in the Venezuelan Bolivarian Revolution using the case of Brito, who lived at the end of his life under conditions of extreme subjection, social invisibility and annihilation.

Equality or superiority? Recognition in international relations
The recent study of recognition in international relations allows one to challenge the dominant model of “rational” actors seeking to maximize their material interests (safety and profit). However, these new studies concentrate on “recognition of equality”, that is to say, collective actors' desire to be recognized by others as equals. These approaches thus put aside “recognition of superiority”, that is to say the will to be recognized as superior to others. While this second type of superiority appears problematic from a normative standpoint, it is not to be expected that it will disappear from the horizon of international affairs. The paper will first analyze the contribution made by studies of recognition in the international relations literature and the manner in which this new orientation has focused principally on “recognition of equality”. Using empirical and anthropological observations, it will then suggest approaches to studying “recognition of superiority”.